Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Friday, October 23, 2015

Facebook and
other social media in New Zealand are awash with the debate about changing the
flag. To my shame, I have a couple of times added my own hasty and
ill-considered comments to all the other hasty and ill-considered comments with
which New Zealand’s cyberspace is almost choked. The time is long overdue for a
more reasoned consideration of the matter.

First, let’s set
aside speculation on whether the whole thing has been cooked up
opportunistically by the prime minister, in order to distract us from more
weighty matters. While this may be a reasonable speculation, it’s no more than
saying that politicians act to their electoral advantage, which is kind of
inevitable. Complaints about the cost of the exercise have some weight, but the
best counter-argument to seeking designs for a new flag is the fact that there
has not yet been a referendum to discover whether there is a solid majority for
change in the first place. This should have been the first step in any flag-changing
process.

Having said
this, though, and realising that the project is now underway willy-nilly, I
express my approval for changing the flag.

I used to argue
that we should change the constitution before we change the flag. My own
preference is for a New Zealand republic. But as long as the Queen of England
is also the Queen of New Zealand, and hence our head of state, then it seemed to
me that having the Union Jack on the flag actually meant something. It points
to a continuing constitutional reality. My argument was that the Union Jack
should be removed only when it no longer had any relationship with New
Zealand’s political identity. But it was pointed out to me, correctly, that
Canada changed its old flag with great success fifty years ago, and yet it
still has the Queen as its head of state. So, much as I dislike our current
constitutional arrangement, I accept that the flag can be changed for reasons
of national identity, regardless of our ongoing subservient constitutional status.

Besides, there
is the glaringly obvious fact that most of the world cannot tell the difference
between the New Zealand flag and the Australian flag, even though New Zealand
declined to become part of the Australian federation over a century ago. (Read more.)

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